Paralyzed since I was 18 years old, I have spent much of the last 30 years thinking about the reasons why the social life of crippled people is so different from those who ambulate on two feet. After reading about the so called Ashley Treatment I decided it was time to write a book about my life as a crippled man. My book, Bad Cripple: A Protest from an Invisible Man, will be published by Counter Punch. I hope my book will completed soon.

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Saturday, September 3, 2011

Hurricane Irene Highlights Inequality

Hurricane Irene blew into the New England area Saturday night or early Sunday morning. In comparison to others I fared well. No trees came down on my property. The only damaged trees were my favorites--two American Chestnuts. The only problem I had was a loss of power. The power went out at 3:30AM Sunday. The power did not come back on until late Thursday evening. Four full days without power sucks. No power means no water, flushing toilets or showers. By Thursday I was, how shall we say it, ripe. No computer too hence no work. What I experienced was a minor inconvenience. The last four days made me realize just how utterly dependent we are on electricity. I also realized how lucky I was--I did not need to evacuate my home and go to a hurricane shelter. If I had to do this I would have been in deep trouble. I cannot go to any shelter--I need a shelter that is accessible. By accessible I mean a building I can enter. I would need a bathroom I can get in and a cot I can transfer on. Pretty basic. Not so fast. It is not so basic.

Thanks to two excellent posts by Not Dead Yet on August 29 and 31, I was deeply troubled to learn, but hardly surprised, that many New York City shelters in low lying areas were not accessible. No mainstream media outlet, television news or newspaper, picked up this story. Two news outlets, Public News Service and NY1, did short stories. That was it. This shocks me. We had full media saturation about the hurricane that was damn near hysterical. The lack of accessible shelters has been detailed by Not Dead Yet. I urge readers to read what Stephen Drake, Susan Dooha and Paul Timmons wrote on August 29 and 31. Timmons has experience with disaster relief, Dooha is the Executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York, and Drake is a research analyst at Not Dead Yet. These people know what they are talking about. Timmons and Dooha have tried to make access issues a concern for FEMA and VOAD. Much money has been spent, many meetings have been held and yet virtually nothing has been accomplished. This is what Dooha witnessed:

"I went to 6 shelters in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens serving people in Red Hook, Fort Green, Long Island City and Lower Manhattan. I found: dangerous ramps leading to locked doors; food up flights of stairs that people with disabilities would not be able to climb; inaccessible bathrooms; cots that would be unusable by people using wheelchairs; lack of volunteers trained to deal with these issues; reliance on elevators (where they existed) that would go out in the event of a power outage; accessibility signage leading to locked doors; reliance on inaccessible transportation (school buses) etc."

The gross lack of access described by Dooha is not acceptable. Need I remind everyone of the disgraceful response to Hurricane Katrina? And what about of 9/11? We have had ten years to prepare for a disaster and somehow shelters and transportation remain inaccessible. Timmons sourly noted: "The fact there's somebody in a wheelchair sitting in on the meetings makes everybody feel all warm and fuzzy. But almost always, any attention to people with disabilities stops there." There really is only one conclusion to be reached--in a very real and practical way the powers that be, FEMA and the Red Cross, do not value the lives of people with disabilities. We are expendable--and acceptable loss of life. To quote Timmons again "The Overlords of the emergency management community have shown to an indisputable certainty that they don't really care whether we live or die.
And ya know what? As I wrote that last line, it occurred to me: it's not entirely accurate. The reality is...they're actually trying to kill us."

Timmons words are inflammatory. I doubt FEMA is trying to kill us deliberately. Yet FEMAs total disregard to access will indeed lead to the deaths of people with disabilities. This has taken place in the past and based on what I have read is still very much a deadly problem--one that need not exist. But exist it does. Hence I live with the sober realization that if a natural disaster took place tomorrow I would be on my own. My odds of survival would be dim at best. This makes me angry and depressed. It is a not so subtle reminder I am far from equal to those that are bipedal.

1 comment:

Indeed something that needs addressing: from personal experience I can relate to this as I recount below but respectfully I offer that you are actually missing the real point here, William, and that is that those shelters are intended to be used in emergency situations during, for example hurricanes, earthquakes and so on, by the general public. Since during an emergency there are bound to be injuries, it only stands to reason that there will be able bodied people who have sustained injuries, cot-bound or finding themselves in wheelchairs for the first time in need of those shelters. Perhaps if that point were driven home it would get more attention.On a personal note, living here in Israel, in 2006 my house shook from rockets landing within 1000 meters and I had just enough time to grab my son from his wheelchair and lie on the floor next to a retaining wall since I have no shelter that is accessible. A very harrowing experience. There were instances of disabled living further north, stuck in their homes until volunteers drove out, risking their lives, to bring them to the safety of the center of the country. Some were running low on food. So even here where you would expect things to be in order in that respect there is still a great deal left to be desired.